


Let Me Go

by bicycool



Category: Pitch Perfect (Movies)
Genre: Angst, F/F, F/M, Mutual Pining, Slow Burn, they're idiots
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-24
Updated: 2018-05-24
Packaged: 2019-05-13 07:21:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,447
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14744438
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bicycool/pseuds/bicycool
Summary: What do you do after a final tour, with so much left unsaid?Set right after PP3 wraps (with a bit of non-canon overlap), Chloe and Beca struggle to figure out their next steps in life, and how to move on from eachother without actually letting go. Lots of angst, lots of uncertainty, and, of course, denial and mutual pining. CanChloe really hang on forever? Can Beca ever learn to communicate? I guess we'll see.





	Let Me Go

**Author's Note:**

> Hi! This is my first ever fanfic, so please, please, don't hesitate to leave any comments. This chapter has a bit of flashback, so I hope that reads well. I'm not really sure what else to say. Have at it.

“Beca.”

She could hear the crowd roaring as DJ Khalid finished his set on stage. Could hear the base, a low throb, build and build. It rose, triumphant, before diving into an exhilarating crescendo. A drop so deep Beca could feel it knock some air from her chest. And then, the best part of any song, the frenzy and hoots and hollers that followed it. Most nights, she would have felt every note. They would have reverberated through her, a wonderful elixir one part air, two parts liquid, and wholly other-worldly, filling up the holes. Filling all of the spaces left by “what if?”s, “I should have,” “I shouldn’t have,” and all other questions (yes, Reader, all were questions, with or without a question mark) we throw at life. Yes, most nights she would have cheered, too. In fact, most nights she would have been part of that music, singing along in the crowd, or throwing down her own beats on stage. It would have soared through her. She would have emerged from the crowd, electricity fizzling through her veins, popping her step, and brightening her eyes.

Tonight was not most nights. Tonight she saw it from a distance. She saw it through eyes that weren’t truly watching, too busy seeing a moment no longer playing out in front of them. A memory. She saw the crowd, enthusiastic and electrified, beneath the whispers of a panicked harbour. A hotel carpet. A hand cupping a cheek. A palimpsest of the entire trip, hell, every moment since meeting the Bellas. The memories played not in rapid succession, no. That would imply some order. Instead, the memories played on top of each other. She saw every smile. Singular and plural all at once.

A snap.

“Earth to Beca.”

A hand.

“Houston, we have a problem. Csshhh.”

Beca’s lips curled as Amy pretended to speak into a walkie-talkie. It wasn’t a full smile, but it was close, and the Australian knew it. She turned from the crowd to face her friend, leaving the hotel carpets and soft hands behind, hoping the Australian wouldn’t see the tears lining her eyes. For now, she could shelf the thoughts, leaving them to churn and churn in the background, desperately searching for a name to put to the empty ache ringing through her chest.

“There she is!” The blonde bellowed, wrapping an arm around the smaller girl and pulling her in for an uncomfortable shoulder-to-boob hug. Beca tensed beneath the unadulterated enthusiasm. It was still there, just beyond her reach. Some tentative emotion she couldn’t put her finger to, something numbing the world around her, reducing the music to a dull, distant throb. It pulled at her, drawing her out of the moment—out of Amy’s arms—and into her head. Her head. Where she did nothing but tread water. Stare at hotel carpets. Watch as…

(Hands. Reaching for ties. Cupping a cheek. The back of a neck.)

(A penny dropping. Somewhere in the back of an unchecked room.)

No. She shook her head, erasing the thought like it was nothing more than a poorly drawn peace-sign in her childhood Etch-A-Sketch. When she returned to the moment, her eyes crept up to meet Amy’s. The Australian met her gaze with a cocked eyebrow and a mocking, confused mouth-gape.

“It’s just fucking crazy…” Beca trailed off, swallowing hard on the words. It was pretty fucking crazy. So much had happened on the trip, hell, the past 7 years, that she still couldn’t wrap her head around. What was next? Was she really going to be signed to DJ Khaled's label? Her, Beca-headphones-for-days-Mitchell? What did that mean for…

(She’d been rounding the corner, right on her heels.)

(Did she giggle?)

Amy’s only response, to Beca’s silent, inexplicable relief, was to laugh and clap her on the back, leaving her hand on the smaller girl as she propelled them through the crowd of early concert-leavers and back towards her own change room.

* * *

 

**_25 Hours Earlier._ **

_Feelings can be felt without being named. Known without being known, in the same way that words can dance on the tips of our tongues and at once be unknowable and completely familiar to us. In the way that we can feel the shape of the word, can swear we know what it sounds like without actually knowing the sound needed to form it, and can feel its weight. We know without knowing._

_In that sense, then, Beca had always known how she felt. Of course, she hadn’t always consciously known it, and that was the problem. There was a difference. A distinction to be made and underlined that she had never quite figured out. The line between ‘my person’ and ‘my person.’ Between one love and another. Love and in love._

_Know that for someone like Beca Mitchell (even someone like Chloe Beale), the lines between love can be hard to understand. For instance, Beca knew that she loved her mother differently than she did her father. That the way she felt about Emily was different to how she felt about Amy. That she could feel and show love in different ways for different people._

_Chloe Beale had helped her understand that._

_How love can be platonic._

_(Amy was constantly poking fun at Beca. That, she’d learned, was just one way of loving. Sometimes. Under certain, comfortable circumstances. And so instead of rolling her eyes at Amy’s crazy Australian stories, Beca had learned to accept them.)_

_How love does not need to be boxed up._

_(A scrunched nose the first time Chloe Beale said she loved her. Friends don’t say that, right? Only Chloe did it so well. So she tried it out every now and then with the Bellas. Never individually, just with them as a group. Because she did love them. She did. And you can love your friends.)_

_How love does not have to be a risk._

_(She woke up every morning to a red mug of coffee sitting on the kitchen counter, messages of encouragement scrawled in the steam on the bathroom window, and was constantly discovering little smiley-faces doodled in the corners of her notebook pages. It was regular. Consistent. Love could be familiar. So familiar, in fact, that she didn’t even think about it as love. Just as life. As life with Chloe.)_

_But still is._

_(She had loved Jesse without loving Jesse. Not the way he wanted. She didn’t know that it was a problem until he said it. Until he said: “I don’t think you love me any different than you love ketchup.” She’d laughed, because of course she loved people differently than she loved food, but the laughter didn’t change the imbalance. It didn’t change that she loved him less than he loved her. He’d taken a risk. She’d taken a risk, too. He just didn’t see it. Didn’t see how loving him, loving anyone, saying those words to an individual—hell, even just a relationship—was a risk. He’d called it off. It hurt.)_

_(Hands pull at a tie…)_

_And the way she felt about Chloe Beale was different, too. It was warm. Cool. Exciting. It was different in the way she felt more herself whenever Chloe Beale was in the room. In that overwhelming drive to give her all._

_The knowing was a process started seven years before but truly beginning in the 23 hours before her solo performance. It started not with the boat—and really, that entire episode was too confusing and outside the norm to really add to any certainty or definition—but with Theo, DJ. Khaled, and the chance at a solo deal. The girl sitting in that chair in front of DJ Khaled was not the same girl who had turned her back on Chloe Beale and stormed into a bear-trap. No. The girl sitting in the chair, outright refusing the offer, couldn’t dream of taking this joy from her friends._

_Could only picture the way those blue eyes would darken, knowing that they would never have their grand, final Bella performance. Could see her friend coming home in that stupid old Bellas uniform, having worn it all day under her veterinary scrubs._

_Only she did not think these things consciously nor singularly, but in chunks and as a collective. She thought of the other Bellas too, unaware of the line she drew between the red-head and the group she belonged to._

_Even as she rowed up to that stupid yacht—again, an episode she would never quite understand, that would stand in her life’s narrative as an odd blip—she was not thinking singularly. She thought not just of Chloe, but of the Bellas._

_Only, and somewhere in her mind a dictionary was being flipped open and a certain word was being underlined, she thought of Chloe and the Bellas. Two parts. Because Chloe Beale had long since earned her own place in Beca’s thoughts. Both part of and separate. Multi-dimensional. More than just a college friend._

**_And then they were back in the hotel._ **

_They were shivering in the hallway, the ugly patterned carpet only adding to the sheer incredulity of the entire evening. To go from an exploding yacht to red triangles and yellow swirls was the universe’s paltry attempt at some grand comedy._

_“Are you sure–“_

_Because Beca knew the girls had been nothing but supportive of her, and that Chloe was included in that, but she also knew that this was their tour. Their final run at being the Bellas. That only a month before, Chloe had been practically sobbing into her drink about how much she would give to sing with the Bellas again._

_She should have known that it would end in some form of disappointment or catastrophe. That a group of college-graduates, willingly abandoning their jobs to tour with their collegiate acapella group and revel in the perceived bonds of sisterhood, would come away from that high feeling… feeling different. Closure does not exist like that—big bangs don’t close eras. No, eras slowly wind down. They are hard to define. There are grey areas._

_Liminal spaces._

_“I’m proud of you, Becs.” She said the words as though they were heavier than they were. Beca wanted to ask, to probe further. To peel back at the layers she’d never fully understood. The way Chloe’s words always seemed to say more than they should. But she looked at that smile and felt calm. Because Chloe Beale’s smile couldn’t be faked, and there it was, letting her know that her best friend was fine. Safe. Happy for her._

_“Alright, Doctor Beale.” Beca laughed, bringing a hand up to scratch at the back of her neck. Chloe smiled at that. She’d known the short brunette long enough to understand when words were too heavy for her. To know that when Beca said ‘Doctor’ she was really saying ‘I’m proud of you, too.’ Was that not what made the other girl so endearing? The compliments, wrapped up in witty humour?_

_But the air between them seemed thinner that night. As though they’d been running around the tropics only to step into an air-conditioned mall. They’d slipped through into something else. Something new. Something untenable. Intangible._

_The fog was everywhere, and there was no time to really think about it._

* * *

**Present**

“Beca!”

She was soon swept up in a mass of squealing Bellas, still high on their last performance together, not yet ready to be sad about what it meant in the greater scheme of things. Even Aubrey, who usually only donned a straightforward smile and kept her enthusiasm at bay, wrapped Beca into a hug, whispering a bounty of thanks into the younger girl’s ears. With each compliment they hurled at her, she shifted uncomfortably from side to side. Of course, of course they were happy for her. Still, each compliment thrust her further and further into a spotlight she’d never wanted for herself.

And Chloe, off to the side, her eyes anywhere but on Beca. Sure, sometimes her gaze felt too heavy for Beca to manage, but this? The absence was worse.

After a particularly tear-stained hug from Emily, Bella extricated herself from the tangled mess that was Bellas pre-party prep and plopped herself on a stool in the corner. Watching them like that, cold glass of water in hand, she saw a scene she’d seen innumerable times before. CR’s hands working at Emily’s hair, pulling it up into a bun, curling it, straightening it, brushing it out of her face; Aubrey snapping her fingers, pointing to brushes and orchestrating what would otherwise be an all-too-chaotic chaos; Flo, cackling at Amy’s jokes and following up with anecdotes that really should have freaked the Australian out more than they did; Esther, once Lilly, standing in the corner and watching, always watching; Jessica and Ashley, wrapped around each other, as much a unit as they had ever been; Chloe…

Beca’s eyes paused, then, on the red-head, herself watching the Bellas from the other side of the room, a wistful smile planted on her face. Arms folded across her chest, thumbs rubbing absentmindedly at her biceps, it came as no shock to Beca that there were tears in the redhead's eyes. That, too, had always been part of this scene. Chloe had always revelled in the journey, throwing herself into Bella trainings and bonding with little thought for what came next.

Perhaps that was unfair. She did it because of what came next. She threw herself into the moment to escape the questions she couldn’t answer.

Still, she poured herself into the journey. Poured and poured, leaving Beca worried that there would be nothing left for the red-head’s own needs. If Beca was a silent mechanic, tinkering at the group’s sound, Chloe was a quiet muse, the inspiration they rarely acknowledged but couldn’t sing without. She shone on each of them like they were the only person she was sharing her light with, and honestly? It looked effortless. Maybe it was effortless. Love was, after all, simply who Chloe was.

All of that pouring was great while the moment lasted. At the end of it all, be it the ACAS, Worlds, or this tour, the other girl stood back and watched, tears in her eyes, and she quietly mourned her joy. And Beca never knew what to do, then. She always watched Chloe’s tears out of the corner of her eye, a lump forming in her own throat as she struggled with the idea of comforting her. Who the fuck can’t comfort their best friend, right? Only Beca never knew how to. All she could ever do was put a hand on Chloe’s back and rub circles into her skin, each circle a conscious effort, too stiff to ever be mistaken for effortless.

Usually they would have been standing side by side, two proud team captains joined by that cruel mixture of melancholy and relief, but tonight, not for the first time during this tour, there was an uncharacteristic distance between them.

(Her hands. Tender. Soft. Cupping a cheek, finding their hold at the base of a neck…)

Until, of course, Chloe’s eyes met Beca’s, and she closed the distance. As she approached, Beca again shook her head, clearing the palimpsest of its underlying memories, trying in vain to erase one…

Only the memory could not be erased. It played there, overlaid atop the scene before her, on repeat. She could still see herself rounding the corner, seeking out, though she’d never admit it, Chloe’s praise. The kind of praise only Chloe had ever known how to give Beca—the kind of praise that she truly believed in. She wanted the ‘wow, this mix is super great, Becs!’ squeal she’d grown to love. Wanted her friend to pull her into a hug until she couldn’t breathe, and then only let go when Beca admitted she’d done a pretty amazing job. Theo, DJ Khaled, and a stadium of fans be damned, Chloe was still her person. Always.

* * *

**24 hours earlier**

_Neither of them said anything until Beca, that soft fog slowly forming, settling in her chest and hardening in her throat, turned from her friend and slid her key into the door._

_“Are you coming back?”_

_It’s strange, how sometimes words can be so quiet but have such a large impact. Beca had turned at them, her brows furrowing as she tried to figure out what question Chloe was really asking._

_“I’m going to sleep, Chlo.” She’d raised an eyebrow, then, at the way her friend was rolling her bottom lip between her teeth._

_“I mean,” and Beca hadn’t understood, still didn’t understand, that pause, that hitch in her break, “to our apartment. Home.” Chloe tugged at her jacket zippers, her eyes flitting between her own fingertips and Beca’s eyes._

_Without thinking, Beca launched into her reply. How was it that she could never sense the gravity of a conversation?_

_“Yeah, all of my stuff is there, so,” Beca waved her hand, the logistics slowly forming in her mind, “and I still have to figure out all of the label contracts, and…” She trailed off, only then catching sight of Chloe, who, always one to listen with full focus, had cast her eyes down to the floor. Even as she spoke, she’d felt herself bulldozing through Chloe’s feelings, aware that something larger was there, but unable to address it. Had she not done this before? Turning her back of Chloe’s tent-confessions; trying to steam through Worlds, without paying attention to her friend’s inner turmoil, even as she knew Chloe was searching her, constantly searching her, for any indication of what was really going on._

_“So, this is it?”_

_Again, Beca struggled to find the meaning Chloe was putting to those words. Her brows furrowed once more, knitting wrinkles into her forehead, and she heard Chloe’s breath hitch. At the sound, her eyes snapped up to meet Chloe’s, encountering a poor sham for indifference. The red-head’s eyes fluttered away and she swallowed, gritting her teeth, hands rubbing against her own wrists._

_“Oh, sweetie, I don’t know. I…” and Beca trailed off, the magnitude of the next evening dawning on her. They should have known, really, that this is how things would end: uncertain. That their crisis-fuelled Bella reunion, replete with sleepovers and pool-side gossip, would ultimately send them home wondering_

_What now?_

_(Remember: closure does not exist with finality—big bangs don’t close eras. No, eras slowly wind down. They are hard to define. There are grey areas.)_

_(Remember: Liminal spaces.)_

_Only she hadn’t thought it would be this. Hadn’t thought that her best friend would be standing in front of her, tears welling in her eyes, wondering where Beca was going. It was like three years ago, all over again._

_“It’s a lot, yeah? I don’t even know if I want to be a vet, and I…” Chloe shook her head, and Beca wanted to, didn’t, reach out and let her feel. She could see her standing there, eyes cast upwards to the ceiling, emotion bubbling beneath her skin, trying so hard to keep her emotions from spilling to the surface. Already she could feel the moment slipping from her fingers. Could see herself failing to catch it._

_Sometimes we see ourselves doing life wrong. Don’t you ever feel those invisible threads? Feel your movement restricted not by any external factors, but by every decision you’ve made? Feel the person you are trapping the person you want to be?_

_“Am I selling out?”_

_Beca didn’t need any more context to understand the question. She knew full well that Chloe still harboured dreams of being a music teacher. She could see, in the way her eyes hugged the floor, that her friend was already missing the music._

_“Oh yeah, selling out for that sweet, sweet vet-school debt.”_

_Why couldn’t she just say ‘No’? Why couldn’t Beca actually talk to her?_

_Chloe’s arms folded across her chest, and Beca knew that she’d said the wrong thing. Of course, of course, Chloe Beale—super senior to the extreme—was scared of this crossroads. But Beca didn’t know how to help her navigate it. Had she not enabled her for years? They’d gone from confidently deciding their individual paths to moving into an apartment together in New York City. In the three years since college, had they not simply dwelled in the transition? Hung around in that post-college haze, the haze only supposed to last until the end of summer?_

_“Chlo, music isn’t going to be mad at you for helping sick puppies.”_

_Beca couldn’t pretend to understand what it was like to have nebulous dreams. Music, making it, mixing it, being involved in it, had always been her dream. Even before Barden. More since then. So she couldn’t understand how Chloe looked at her, then. How Chloe smiled and nodded, but didn’t unfold her arms._

_“You’re allowed to love something else. To move on to other things.”_

_And Beca didn’t understand the way Chloe shrank, then. Nor did she understand the way she couldn’t not say something when Chloe looked like this. How each time her words fell flat, she had to say something new. Didn’t understand why she couldn’t just let things be. Didn’t understand why sometimes she couldn’t say anything, and sometimes she spoke too much and said nothing. Why was it that Chloe’s words could fix everything and her words couldn’t do the same? How could the same words, the same feelings, sound so different?_

_“We should probably go to sleep. You’ve got a big night tomorrow.”_

_Maybe if Chloe were someone else, she would have sounded hurt. Maybe she would have sounded resentful. But she didn’t. She sounded the same way she’d sounded the whole evening: proud. She smiled into the words, her eyes lighting up. As though she were reminding Beca that tomorrow was Christmas, or the first day of school._

_“Right. Yeah.”_

_“I love you.”_

_The fog was deeper, then. It pooled in her throat, her mouth, on her tongue. Danced there. In the back of her mind the dictionary snapped open again. The underlined word wrenched itself from the page, marching down the line, onto her tongue, and sitting there on the tip of her tongue. Damn it! There it remained, refusing to slip. Refusing to give name to the fog around her. Refusing to lend clarity to a situation that had been 7 years in the making._

_Beca looked to Chloe, her mouth fumbling, tongue-tied by uncertainty. And Chloe, stood there. She was always looking like she felt more than she was saying, like she felt more and meant more than Beca knew how to feel or understand. It was no different, then, with her make-up smeared by a near-death experience and her hair still ocean-water wet._

_“I…” Fumbling, fumbling. God damn it! Always fumbling. They’d just escaped death and Beca couldn’t even tell her friend she was proud. Couldn’t find the words to say “I care about you, too, Chlo.” There was one of the women (The Woman) she had risked her life for, and she couldn’t say anything. She furrowed her brows at her own struggle, pinching the bridge of her nose as she tried, again, again, again, and failed, again, again, again, to clear the fog and dislodge the words and read that damn dictionary._

_“I know.” Chloe smiled at her, and Beca nodded, and then Beca turned on her heel and stepped into her room. God, it felt weird to leave Chloe in that hallway. After sharing a bed with her for just north of a year, leaving her in a hallway—well, really, a room—to herself—and after a near death experience, no less—felt unnatural. But they’d done it that whole tour, right? And every night they’d ended up in the hallway, just like that, and every night…_

_Every night, Beca was the first to leave._

_And Chloe stood in that hallway alone, her hand leaning against the door-handle._

* * *

**Present**

It was the hands. When Chloe finally joined Beca to watch the other Bellas get ready for the party, she greeted her with a hug. A hug that ended with Chloe pulling back, still a bit too close for comfort, and pushing a strand of Beca’s hair behind her ear. Just looking at her, then, Chloe’s hand still grazing Beca’s cheek.

It was the hands. They sent the memories—the memory, capital ‘T’ The—to the forefront.

Tender. Soft. Cupping a cheek, finding their hold around the back of a neck. Before, picking pineapple off of pizzas; slender fingers trailing along dewy, steamed-up mirrors (the notes so simple); fingertips grazing temples as they brush strands of brown hair out of the way; holding wrists; hovering over laptop keyboards; holding mugs of green tea; holding hers; pulling her head to their shoulders; holding her; holding her; holding her.

Holding her.

Holding. Always holding. Almost magnetic in the way they pulled others into themselves. Around themselves. God, how had Beca not seen this before? How had she been oblivious to the way those hands—her hands—pushed and pulled at her without so much as a touch? To the way her own hands felt more whole in hers?

Did Chloe’s hands feel more whole in his?

Beca could still feel her body lurch forwards as she stopped dead in her tracks, unable to hide the grimace plastered to her face, a macabre look ill-fitting the supportive friend she tried so hard to be. Chloe’s hands. Tender. Soft. Cupping a cheek. His cheek. Finding their hold around the back of a neck. His neck. God, that tenderness felt like a slap in the face.

Only when it had happened, the pain wasn’t sharp. Nothing was.

The fog, rolling in. Engulfing the stadium and Beca with it, muting the music. How else could she describe it? It was not a slap in the face, but a slow, numbing sensation. Chloe kissed Chicago, and it numbed her. It didn’t take her breathe away, no. Not entirely. She could still breathe, just slower. Like she was living in a world filled with cotton balls. A soft, heavy weight. The slow onset of a feeling she couldn’t quite place.

Even now, sitting in the dressing room, Chloe by her side, her mind was still trying to put a name to that faceless feeling. The dictionary pages fluttered back and forth, opening and closing, opening and closing, scanning, scanning, her mind whizzing in the background as the rest of the world bumbled about mutedly. Even as Chloe’s hand settled on her arm, squeezing it, the feeling was in that, too.

Everything about Chloe had always been so clear. Not necessarily her feelings, no, Beca had never been clear on her feelings for anything, but the way she felt. Every sense was heightened. Chloe’s touch felt more real than any other touch, as though Beca’s body were perfectly calibrated to the red-head. In crowded rooms, Beca could always pick out Chloe’s voice. Could always move across the room and find her, without always knowing she was looking. At frat parties, hours would fall away as they laughed over their stupid in-jokes.

Is that not what it means to know someone? To have them feel more real than anything, anyone, else? Because when Beca looked at Chloe, she didn’t just see her in the present. She saw Chloe in layers. Saw her smile as she encouraged Beca onto the stage for the first time; saw her, before she had that scar on her forehead; saw her with her make-up done; saw her first thing in the morning, without make-up; saw her sick; healthy; tired; sad; human; human; human; Chloe.

“Hey, Becs.” Chloe’s words were soft but crisp, bringing an immediate smile to the brunette’s lips, try as she did to contain it.

“Hey, you…” Beca trailed off, knowing full well that whatever attempt at small-dog over-confidence she tried to project would be brushed aside by the red-head. Where Amy demanded confidence, Chloe demanded nothing but honesty.

Chloe leaned in, the way she always had, ever since that night in the amphitheatre and Beca could feel her body tense in response, the fog building in her chest and threatening to spill out of her. The other girl was a bloody magnet, pulling words and feelings out of Beca before she could label them herself.

“What’s going on up there, Becs?” Her finger tapped as Beca’s temple, and the brunette scrunched her nose. Seconds ticked by, slow as they had ever been, as Beca searched for words to describe what she was thinking about. Was she sad? Excited? Melancholic? Maybe all of them. Mostly, though…

“I don’t know,” and with that she casts her eyes down to the floor, searching for something to add on, to bring a false sense of clarity to an otherwise ambiguous feeling, “I… Yeah.” The thought was punctuated by a perfunctory wave at the dressing room in front of them, where already the Bellas were beginning to search for their purses.

(Her hand was cupping his cheek.)

“Alright, aca-bitches! Time to party!”

The Bellas started clearing the room, leaving Beca and Chloe straggling behind as they collected their own belongings.

(She was pulling his tie. Pulling him in. Closer. Closer.)

(Her hand on his neck)

“You coming, Beca?”

She was standing in the doorway, head turned back over her shoulder, holding a hand out for Beca to accept. A magnet. Beckoning her in. Drawing her in. Pulling. Pulling.

(She kissed him.)

Beca blinked, trying to keep the reels from clicking into place, to stop the film playing over and over again in her mind. Still, Chloe kissed him. Her hands. Tender. Soft. Cupping a cheek, finding their hold around the back of a neck. His cheek. His neck. And Beca saw it not as a single moment—not as the moment they were in—but in layers. She felt Chloe’s hand brushing away her hair. Saw it hover over the space bar on Beca’s laptop. She saw it before and after a new freckle. Saw each and every nail-polish colour that had ever graced its fingernails. Saw all of it, all of it, all of it, at once.

Tried not to remember how she couldn’t look at Chloe’s eyes. Nor her lips. Her hair. The hands were enough. More than enough, they were too much. She could feel them holding her in place, knocking the wind from her.

This time, the memory played over Chloe Beale, standing in the doorway, her bright eyes and 100-gigawatt smile beaming across at Beca. This time, as she saw Chloe’s hands cupping Chicago’s cheek, the fog started to clear. A word clawed its way up her throat. Because this time, in the split second when the wind was knocked from her chest and she was numb to the impending pain, Beca knew she loved Chloe Beale. Not in the way you love someone at the start of a relationship. Not in the way you can’t stop peppering their face with kisses. No. She loved Chloe as part of herself. Loved her in the way someone loves another after seven years. More than that, she knew that she’d always known. In a moment, seven years of words, dancing, dancing on the tip of her tongue, all slipped off.

As the memories fell down on top of each other, one after the other, walls formed. Each memory a brick, stacking and stacking, climbing higher and higher, weighing down on her. Crushing her. God, how remembering hurt. How she felt each and every touch all at once, pushing and pushing her until she cracked.

Beca smiled through it, her smile not a smile so much as a crack, and she reached for Chloe’s hand. She gripped it hard, holding on for dear life.

God, did she hope Chloe couldn’t see the tears in her eyes.

“Yeah, I’m coming.”

Chloe smiled at her.

The word slipped again. Where once there had been fog and confusion, when Chloe smiled there was clarity. Too much clarity. The word throbbed in her mind, echoing around her too-stupid brain with each pump of blood through her heart. Over and over, the word she’s spent 7 years trying to coax out of the dark.

Love.

Its moment in the sun was fleeting. As Chloe pulled her out of the dressing room, Beca forced the word back. Love did not have to be boxed up, but this time it would be. She swallowed it. Felt it cut at her throat, her stomach, her world, as she forced it back into the dark.

(Love.)

 


End file.
